Site Ed. Note: The front page and inside page report that the Japanese had accepted the final terms of surrender, thus ending World War II, 1,347 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor—at least, sort of.

There had been and remained confusion during the morning hours, with Japanese broadcasts by Domei asserting at 1:50 a.m. EWT the acceptance of the terms communicated Saturday and that it would shortly be en route to the Allies via Switzerland. But Switzerland then stated that, as of 11:15 a.m. EWT, there had been no word from Tokyo.

At 12:08 p.m., Domei again re-asserted the acceptance of the terms.

According to Domei also, hundreds of Japanese gathered beneath dark clouds in front of the Niju-Bashi bridge leading to the quiet Imperial Palace in Tokyo and prostrated themselves, weeping uncontrollably and seeking the Emperor's forgiveness for their failure.

The report stated that the Emperor had been "very concerned" ever since he had issued his Declaration of War on December 8, 1941, Tokyo time.

A Japanese general stated, "The fact that the blood of our warriors was unable to set the world on a new path can be seen in the Imperial message at this time as a revelation of God." He went on to urge that the country now turn its attention to enhancement of culture through science and continue devotion to the Emperor.

The White House indicated that no confirmation had yet been received.

Until word was finalized, American air forces continued to attack Japan, a raid of between 950 and 1,000 B-29's, a record raid, having dropped 6,000 tons of bombs the day before and early on this final day of the war. Six military targets were struck during the prior 24 hours, including Isezaki and Kumagara, in the vicinity of Tokyo, and an oil refinery at Akita on northern Honshu, each hit for the first time. Nagoya, the Marifu railway yards, and the Hikari and Osaka arsenals were also hit.

The news of Japan's apparent surrender had come to Guam headquarters only a short time after the B-29's had indicated they had dropped their bombs.

The Russians continued to advance in Manchuria, capturing Linkow and cutting the lines of communication for the Japanese fighting in the Sungari-Ussuri River Valley. The Russians were 177 miles east of Harbin, the key arsenal and communications center in central Manchuria. Moscow stated that the Japanese defense on southern Sakhalin Island had been broken, placing the Soviets within 26 miles of the Japanese mainland. Advances were being made along a 360-mile front from Hulin to Linkow and south to the Korean frontier as Japanese soldiers in the mountain passes continued to fight fiercely.

Fighting also continued in China and Burma.

—Hold the phone. This could be another false alarm.

—Eh, let 'em fight a little longer. Get it out of their system.

Eventually, at 7:00 p.m., the news was confirmed by the President.

In New York, crowds had gathered in Times Square in the morning in anticipation of the announcement of V-J Day. "Jostling, cheering crowds increased by the minute," surpassing the 100,000 mark by mid-morning. Fireworks were set off in Chinatown. Church bells rang as worshipers knelt in prayer. The din of celebration reverberated into Grand Central Station.

Mayor La Guardia appealed to the residents to show that New Yorkers knew how to behave. Nevertheless, police began receiving reports of blocks with which they paved, and other missiles, being thrown through store windows—a quaint New York tradition when celebrating the end of a war. Another crowd emptied a Canal Street novelty store of confetti and noisemakers, presumably paying for the booty.

When the first reports had come in the morning, darkened buildings lit up and girls threw their arms around willing servicemen.

The below well-known picture was captured by Life photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. The happy couple went unidentified until recently and reunited in Times Square on August 11, 2012, three days ago, to celebrate the 67th anniversary of their famous kiss. It turns out that they did not know each other at the time, and the happy sailor, dating another woman, who eventually became his wife, simply grabbed the nearest female handy and dipped her. Who could blame him?

Brig. General Elliott Roosevelt and his wife Faye Emerson were in Times Square for the celebration. One sailor remarked to him that he wished President Roosevelt could be alive to see this day. General Roosevelt quietly responded that he so wished, too.

On the East Side, a giant bonfire was lit, with flames rising three stories. A brass band roamed the streets playing, as children in pajamas followed.

A man described the scene on a Brooklyn subway car where boys and girls with horns, flags, and streamers marched from car to car making merry noise, shaking the hands of men in uniform and showering them with kisses. A Chinese man saw the headline and immediately knelt and prayed.

Most war workers across the nation remained on the job. But someone blew the whistle prematurely at the Ford River Rouge plant and 42,000 workers streamed outside.

Most of the country, however, sat patiently waiting for official confirmation from Washington before beginning to celebrate.

Another inside page reports that numerous people in Charlotte had called The News early in the morning to find out whether the report of war's end was true. Broad grins were seen on the streets. People asked questions and then scurried away without answers. Workers, dismissed for the day, purchased noise-makers and bells and walked hurriedly to nowhere in particular. Young people rode up and down Tryon Street in cars, beeping horns and, for a change, no policeman sought to give them a ticket but smiled at the noisy parade.

A black woman had knocked on the door of three working women who shared a Charlotte apartment and announced that she had news to impart: the war had ended and she wanted work. The young women rubbed their sleepy eyes and wondered if the story was real or imagined. For the time being, it could not be confirmed. Whether the woman at the door got a job is not imparted.

In San Francisco, soldiers and sailors climbed onto the tops of streetcars and cable cars and rang their bells.

In Los Angeles, college boys lit a bonfire.

In Nashville, a spontaneous square dance began in the public square.

Thousands crammed the Randolph Street Rialto in Chicago.

In Albuquerque, diners at a night club began kissing each other as soldiers threw over tables.

On Guam, Marines were skeptical of the news, some saying that it couldn't be all over. There appeared little excitement among the enlisted men. A wave of cheering, however, had erupted in the headquarters building when the news had come over the radio in the afternoon hours.

At Pearl Harbor, more than 40 searchlights were lit at one time and a 20-minute demonstration of flares, tracer bullets, and rockets took place, while Honolulu remained relatively calm, premature celebration having already consumed most of the energy of residents.

A piece on the inside page provides a chronology of the wait since Saturday for the news.

And so it was true: the long, terrible ordeal of this worst war in the history of mankind was over. It had ended abruptly, in the course of an eventful week, when the country had labored since V-E Day under the belief that it would likely last another six months to a year, with the possibility of invasion of Japan in a bloody fight still looming, until the news of August 6 and 9.

On another inside page, Hal Boyle, en route to General MacArthur's headquarters in Manila, tells of his trip from the West Coast and the pre-trip instructions by a captain, which included the advice not to kiss the native girls of the Philippines lest one wind up with tuberculosis of the windpipe. The captain also instructed that each passenger drink five full glasses of water before boarding the airplane so that, if it should ditch, the passenger would have plenty of water in his system enabling endurance for an additional 76 hours.

Mr. Boyle received a knife, canteen, a bottle of water, purifying tablets, and some mosquito repellent, plus a can of insect powder. When he hesitantly inquired as to whether he might obtain a pair of sunglasses and a wristwatch, as the crew of the plane had, he was denied the request.

"What does time mean in the Pacific, anyway?" came the reply.

And the head of the Associated Press sent a message regretting premature report of peace by the United Press, which had initially been flashed on Sunday night at 9:01 p.m.

On the editorial page, "War of Words" recalls the rhetoric used to win the war in the Pacific, the utterances of President Roosevelt on December 8, his "Date of Infamy" speech, and such coarser statements as that by General Simon Bolivar Buckner, killed on Okinawa on June 18, who had stated once, "Congratulations to the sinkers of the unmentionable stinkers."

"The Great Busts" recounts the news flashes which were quickly withdrawn. One had occurred at 4:30 p.m. June 4, 1944, prematurely announcing the landings in France of the Allies, then quickly withdrawn by 4:44.

Then, during the San Francisco Conference, Senator Tom Connally had told reporters that Germany had surrendered before it had occurred. A few days later, correspondent Edward Kennedy had reported on May 7 the news of the signing of the surrender that day at the little red schoolhouse in Reims. It was true—unless you happen to be a bloody Limey or Communist in which case you have it on the 8th, as you bloody well please—, but he was not supposed to release the report until the Big Three jointly announced it, which did not occur until the following day, primarily to accommodate the Russians who needed first to relay the news to Moscow. As a pool reporter, Mr. Kennedy had been taken into the confidence of Supreme Allied Headquarters along with the other reporters allowed into the room.

Finally, just two days earlier, on Sunday night, the United Press had stumbled and announced prematurely Japan's surrender. Five minutes later, the story was killed. It turned out to be some prank of unknown origin. The U.P. was investigating.

The editorial wistfully wonders whether news gathering was not better in the old days when it took a fortnight for even local news to reach a colonial North Carolina newspaper.

We, ourselves, subscribe to the premise that, sometimes, the news is better cold, served up 67 years later.

"Dr. Ray Jordan" laments the loss to Emory University of the minister of the First Methodist Church in Charlotte, who had been active in the community outside the church and had been the author of several widely read religious books.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Representative John Rankin of Mississippi discussing West Coast Longshoremen's Union leader Harry Bridges, contending that he was still a Communist and influencing labor in that direction. He was also now bringing his influence to Washington, picketing the Department of Commerce.

Drew Pearson reports that new War Mobilizer and Reconverter John W. Snyder had, immediately upon the return of President Truman the previous week from Potsdam, met him at the dock and informed of the bleak problems surrounding reconversion and the need to take immediate action to avert an economic crisis, with as many as 20 million people out of work within a year should peace with Japan come suddenly. The major problems were in the Army and Navy refusing to discharge personnel to man the mines and the railroads.

Mr. Acheson convinced President Truman to discuss the matter with Owen Lattimore, one of the foremost American authorities on China and a former adviser to Chiang Kai-shek. Mr. Lattimore had advised the President for a half hour prior to his leaving for Potsdam and the President listened, but made no responsive comment.

That underlying "Unknown Soldier", incidentally, from August 30, 1944, is now here. "Pacific", we have already pacified with the quietus made, means being by a bared bodkin.

Finally, Mr. Pearson looks at the subject of how President Truman had convinced Premier Stalin to commit Russian troops to the Pacific war. But the commitment, he informs, had actually been made in late 1943 at Tehran, in the first Big Three meeting. FDR had met alone with Stalin and convinced him that Russia's entry would shorten the war in the Far East considerably. Stalin had agreed, stating that he considered Japan a Fascist nation inimical to all anti-Fascist nations, including Russia. He had not pursued details, however, as Russia was still engaged in the heavy fighting on the Eastern Front. But Stalin had agreed ultimately to enter the war against Japan in exchange for the opening of the Western Front through France by the British and Americans.

At Yalta in February, FDR again broached the issue and Stalin had made an unequivocal commitment to enter the war in the Pacific at a time after the defeat of Germany. He had agreed that at a Big Three meeting following V-E Day, the details would be worked out. The meeting itself had been delayed only by President Roosevelt's death and the need for President Truman to familiarize himself with foreign policy.

Marquis Childs begins by recalling one of the scenes of the play Our Town by Thornton Wilder, set in New Hampshire, and then quickly shifts the scene to the New Mexico desert below Alamogordo and the "blinding flash" which had taken place there July 16, and then to crowded Hiroshima eight days earlier where the same blinding flash had surprised the world. He suggests that the latter image "fills us with terror and horror".

He quotes a cynic at the club round table, who had said, "Well, it's just like giving loaded machine-guns to a cage full of apes and then turning them loose in the streets."

Mr. Childs continues, "But it fills us with awe, too, and with wonder." He compares it to the feeling communicated by the girl in Our Town as she looked across the night sky of New Hampshire, and filled in her address to her brother, starting with street, town, county, state, country, then Earth, Universe, and lastly, the Mind of God.

He remarks that the scientists who had performed the test at Trinity were unsure of the results before the test. They still did not understand the effects of the resultant radiation as they had given conflicting reports on the subject. In truth, science had not come to understand the universe or how it was constructed.

Mr. Childs talked with one of the insiders on the atomic bomb project who had dealt with the scientists who developed the bomb. He told Mr. Childs that 18 months earlier he had returned from lunch with some of the scientists and that they had informed him that they were unsure whether, once the chain reaction had been started, it could be stopped. He imparted that they wondered aloud whether the planet might be torn apart by the explosion. He had also stated that if it had been so, he would not have regretted it as the death would have been painless and the unborn surely could not complain. He had concluded, "Perhaps the human experiment has been a mistake."

His words were based on his experiences in London during the war, seeing death up close.

Thousands, Mr. Childs suggests, were still crying in agony in Japan over the unleashing of that force.

It was therefore imperative immediately to insure that the bomb would be controlled. The suggestion had been made to turn it over to the new United Nations Organization. But he believes that the new organization was not yet equipped to handle the atomic bomb. Yet every day which passed increased the danger that it would lead to competition among the nations for its further development. He suggests that representatives of the U.S., Britain, Canada, and Australia meet to effect control of the new weapon, until such time as the U.N. would be equipped to handle it.

A regular letter writer to The News provides an open letter to President Truman in which she instructs him that he had come to office with no mandate independent of the election of President Roosevelt and thus should only follow his policies. She believes that the country would not see the like of FDR again for a thousand years.

An Army private in France, who had been a Charlotte fireman before entering service, writes a letter thanking Charlotte for the plans for the new Veterans Memorial Park. He states that the veterans wanted no monument which could soon be forgotten, but rather such things as the planned park where children could play in the free world which the soldiers had fought to insure.

Dorothy Thompson writes unhesitatingly that the war was over. She observes that the last land battles had occurred where the war had begun, in Manchuria. "It rounded the circle completely."

The dead of the war were incalculable and civilian deaths probably equaled that of soldiers.

The last to perish were those unfortunate souls who happened to be in Hiroshima and Nagasaki the previous week, on Monday and Thursday. She remarks that they had not burned or been bombed to death, but "simply disappeared into nothingness". She finds it instructive that the words "annihilated" and "nihilism" both derive from the Latin for "nothing", "nihil".

She cautions, however, that, while no longer at war, the world also was not yet at peace. There would be a prolonged aftermath to the war. Nothing was the same as it had been at the start. The enemy countries were destroyed. The new technological revolution had been forged by the war, and with it the spirit and intellect of mankind irrevocably changed for the foreseeable future.

The United States had emerged from the war the strongest power on the sea and in the air, having come into the war on shaky grounds on both scores. Great Britain was no longer the preeminent master of the seas, as it had entered the war. The Soviet Union, entering the war weak militarily, now was the undisputed military master on the Continent, checked only by American technology.

Germany, France, and all of the rest of Europe had completely passed from the power picture.

China was only a potential power.

With the advent of the atomic bomb, there was no longer any chance of stabilization of power, as now one nation could blow another off the planet. The Anglo-American powers could not ever go to war with the Soviet Union and no one else could go to war against them, lest the result be complete destruction.

She posits that the great question was whether science would now open an age of intellectual and cultural expansion or whether it would only lead to an age of peace enforced by terror, a peace maintained by the great powers crushing the smaller nations.

"But if we take the second way—and there are still signs of it—we shall see the precarious peace of tyranny in which the dumb millions, afraid ever to protest, forever suffer and forever endure that the great may remain forever great and only they be either secure or free."

She credits Hitler with perhaps having been the first in "this infernal age" to recognize that reality.

As to the Dorman Smith of the day...